Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/48

 money which its editor had been able to raise, and leaving a heavy deficit.

The failure was the more serious because of other debts—personal, and in connection with two volumes which he had published. One, a collection of his newspaper articles, was called "Days and Nights in Italy"; the other, "Lord Byron at the Armenian Convent," this being practically a handy guide-book to Venice. Nothing paid. The result was that he left Italy, after living there for twenty years, poorer than he went, which literally meant that he came back penniless. Broken financially, and in spirit, he returned to his father.

To the young girl Marie, whose life had hitherto been so exceptionally quiet, there was almost a romantic interest in this sudden arrival of the middle-aged man who, she was informed, was her stepbrother, and she made much of him. Moreover, Dr. Mackay was seriously disappointed at the failure of his son to make a career, and at his position—without income or apparent hope of earning one; and it was evident to Marie that it would afford her stepfather the keenest pleasure if George Eric should, after all, achieve success.

The circumstances of her untiring efforts to bring him into notice are known only to a few, though misunderstood by many.